Cricketing Caesar

Mark Peel

Description

Mike Brearley was one of England's greatest cricket captains. He thrice won the Ashes, including the unforgettable series of 1981, when his leadership helped England to snatch victory from defeat. Yet there was nothing inevitable about his rise. A spell out of the game in his mid-20s stymied his progress and when he returned full-time to captain Middlesex, his innovative approach found little favour with the old guard. In this first-ever biography of Brearley, award-winning cricket writer Mark Peel reveals how Brearley overcame his critics to lead Middlesex to four county championships and two Gillette Cup wins. His rise to the England captaincy was fast, but his unrivalled leadership skills contrasted with his repeated failures with the bat. Away from cricket, Brearley possessed a range of cultural interests along with a sharp intellect, which saw him achieve eminence as a psychoanalyst. Drawing on interviews with friends and team-mates, Peel assesses the many facets of this complex man to explain his phenomenal success as a leader.

Sujets

• Críquet
• Cricket

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 11 mai 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785317033
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2020
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Mark Peel, 2020
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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781785316623
eBook ISBN 9781785317033
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Contents
Introduction
1. His Father s Son
2. Shades of C B Fry
3. Growing Up in South Africa
4. The Wilderness Years
5. New Wine in Old Bottles
6. Stepping Up
7. The Lure of the Orient
8. England Arise!
9. Misfortune in Pakistan
10. Good Enough?
11. The Ashes Retained
12. A Missed Opportunity
13. Physician Heal Thyself
14. In Jardine s Shadow
15. Demob Happy
16. The Art of Captaincy
17. Annus Mirabilis
18. Festooned with Honours
19. Benign Critic
20. On the Couch
21. Reform in Order to Preserve
Mike Brearley
Endnotes
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Introduction
F RIDAY, 10 July 1981 was no ordinary evening in the life of a professional cricketer, even one as distinguished as Mike Brearley, since he was a guest at Westminster School s Election Dinner, held annually at the end of the summer term. While guests, dressed in all their finery, were being greeted with Latin and Greek epigrams, Brearley couldn t help but contrast this ancient ritual with major disturbances in neighbouring Brixton, a multiracial community with a long history of social deprivation and fractious relations with the police.
The previous week the disaffected youth of Toxteth in Liverpool and Moss Side in Manchester had taken to the streets to vent their fury at the economic and social policies of the Thatcher government in the worst riots in living memory. Such a surge of popular discontent threatened to overshadow the forthcoming marriage of Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer, unless the nation could look outward and unite around something more inspirational.
Although sport seemed an obvious force for social cohesion, the fortunes of the England cricket team hardly suggested they would provide the Midas touch. One down after two Tests to Australia and without a win in 12 matches, the England selectors had taken the drastic step of dismissing the embattled captain Ian Botham and recalling his predecessor Brearley in a caretaker capacity. While Brearley reaffirmed his intention not to tour again, he was happy enough to oblige and was welcomed back with open arms by his former team-mates. As they assembled at Headingley, venue for the third Test, he went out of his way to restore morale and convince Botham in particular that he remained a class player. His show of confidence was soon vindicated as Botham s 6-95 and half-century was the one redeeming feature of a lacklustre England performance over the first three days. Bowled out for 174 in reply to Australia s first innings of 401/9 declared, and forced to follow on, their position appeared near hopeless when they joined their bullish opponents for a barbeque at Botham s home on the Saturday evening.
Monday brought no improvement in England s fortunes as they slumped to 135/7, still 92 runs short of avoiding an innings defeat. With the ship slowly sinking and nothing to lose, Botham and his new partner, Graham Dilley, opted to go down fighting. Striking the ball to all parts, they put on 117 in 80 minutes and, after Dilley s departure for 56, Botham kept playing his shots. Taking advantage of a tiring attack and enjoying his fair share of fortune, he raced to 144 not out at the close when England were 124 to the good with one wicket left. After Bob Willis, England s number eleven, was out early the next morning, Australia needed 130 to win. It looked a mere formality but the pummelling they had taken the previous evening had exacted a dreadful toll. England, on the other hand, had rediscovered their sense of purpose and with Brearley back in charge they fancied their chances, even when Australia proceeded cautiously to 56/1. Switching his strike bowler Willis to the Kirkstall Lane End to give him the advantage of the slope, Brearley encouraged him to run in as fast as he could and not to worry about bowling no-balls, a fault that had dogged him in the first innings. Boosted by this show of confidence, Willis responded in style. Rediscovering a level of pace and hostility of yesteryear, he bowled like a man possessed. Well supported by his team-mates, he ripped through the Australian batting to return match-winning figures of 8-43 to complete the most remarkable comeback in the history of Test cricket.
The match captivated the nation and helped fuel a mood of euphoria that expressed itself the following week at the royal wedding and at the Edgbaston Test immediately afterwards. In a taut, low-scoring contest, England s batting failed throughout and only a ninth-wicket stand of 50 in their second innings between Bob Taylor and John Emburey kept them in the game. This time the Australian target was 151 but on a frenetic fourth day the England bowlers, cheered on by a highly partisan crowd, made their opponents fight for every run. Thanks to a dogged 40 from Allan Border, Australia were in sight of the home straight, but at 105/4 he was caught at short leg by Mike Gatting off a brute of a ball from Emburey. Thereafter the floodgates opened as Brearley persuaded a reluctant Botham to re-enter the fray. It proved the defining moment. Sweeping all before him, the now-imperious Botham captured the remaining five wickets for one run as England ran out victors by 29 runs.
At Old Trafford in the fifth Test, Botham s genius was once again to the fore when his brilliant 118 in England s second innings gave his side an unassailable lead. Set 506 to win, Australia lost by 103 runs, enabling England to win the series and retain the Ashes. With the final Test ending in a draw, Brearley once again vacated the national stage to enter the pantheon of great England captains, his reputation forever forged by the events of 1981. When he published his classical treatise on leadership, The Art of Captaincy , in 1985, his reputation grew ever greater so that his captaincy became the yardstick by which subsequent England captains were assessed.
Given Brearley s youthful pedigree as a batsman and captain it would be all too easy to see his rise to national eminence as inevitable, but in truth the road he travelled contained many a bump along the way. Had the game of cricket entirely consumed him as it consumed his contemporaries such as Ray Illingworth or Geoff Boycott, he might well have emerged as a greater player, but cricket had to compete with his academic vocation.
The son of a Yorkshire schoolmaster with a fine sporting pedigree, Brearley, born in 1942, excelled at City of London School (CLS) and St John s College, Cambridge, where his first in Classics and an upper second in Moral Sciences was matched by his success at cricket. Having established a record aggregate of 4,068 runs during his four years in the Blues team and captained them in his last two, he was voted Young Cricketer for 1964, the year he was chosen for MCC s (Marylebone Cricket Club) tour to South Africa that winter. His failure to live up to expectation helped persuade him that his future lay primarily in academia, and for the next five years his research at Cambridge and his teaching at Newcastle University greatly restricted his appearances for Middlesex, his indifferent form offering few hints of future higher honours. Even when he assumed the captaincy of Middlesex in 1971, his batting continued to pale, until a chance encounter with Tiger Smith, the former England wicketkeeperbatsman and Warwickshire coach, in 1974, brought about a change in his technique. Rediscovering some of the fluency of his youth, his progress over the next two years was such that he made his Test debut against the West Indies in June 1976 at the advanced age of 34. He made little impression and was dropped after two matches, only to be recalled as vice-captain to Tony Greig for MCC s 1976/77 tour of India. He began with an effortless double century against West Zone but was never able to reproduce that form in the Tests. This failure to impose himself at the highest level continued throughout his 31 Tests as captain, a defect that heaped additional pressure on his leadership. Robin Marlar, the Sunday Times s cricket correspondent, wrote:
Time after time, one recalls sitting in a stand either here or in Australia, thinking and even writing that this simply could not continue, that England must never again in the future take the field behind a man whom unkind critics could describe as a non-playing captain. [1]
At first the critics held their fire because of Brearley s success in bringing home the Ashes in the summer of 1977, but a slew of low scores against the unfancied Pakistan and New Zealand attacks the following year gave them fresh ammunition. He owed his survival to his immense popularity with his team and the lack of a viable alternative, but his poor form continued in Australia that winter when his first six Test innings yielded a mere 37 runs. After scores of 1 and 0 in the third Test at Melbourne, England s first defeat under his captaincy, he momentarily thought of dropping himself only to be talked out of it by his fellow selectors. A painstaking fifty in the next Test at Sydney helped save his blushes, but he en